Walking up the steps of the visitors dugout and into the brilliant sunshine, Jerry Hairston Jr. peered out onto a field and batting cage filled with Padres taking pre-game warmups. Then, naturally, Hairston looked beyond them all to see what the fuss really was all about.

Hairston didn’t need to see the writing on the wall to tell the big difference in less-big Petco Park.

“Now you guys move the fences in!!!” yelled the Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder, flinging his bat out onto the grass in mock anger and throwing up both arms. “Now you move the fences in!!!”

It will be a common lament of visiting teams, seemingly each of whom has a player who did time with the Padres and felt the sting of his home-run ball being scored a flyout. The first to come to town to test Petco’s new dimensions are the Dodgers, including Hairston and another player of some repute who wore the Padres colors in better days.

“You can't focus on the dimensions, but the pitcher," said Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who had two hits and an RBI in a 9-3 loss to his former team. "Will (Venable) still hit a ball good to right-center and still ran it into a triple. I’ve just always said the dimensions of a ballpark are even (for both clubs), so it doesn’t change whether you’re going to win or lose the game.”

Hairston and Gonzalez both were members of the last winning Padres club, a collection of journeymen and blue-collar players who compiled a 90-72 record and felt just short of the postseason berth that’s eluded San Diego since 2006. Ramon Hernandez, just traded over the weekend from Colorado to L.A., was the catcher on San Diego's division champions of 2005.

That Gonzalez was in San Diego for this particular home-opener was fitting, even if he was with the other team. A case can be made that no hitter’s home-run totals were quite as influenced by the ballpark as the left-handed slugger, who played hundreds of games in downtown San Diego.

Of his 161 homers in Gonzalez’ five years with the Padres, 104 were on the road, with only 12 of his career-high 42 knocks coming at home in 2009. If Gonzalez wasn’t so gifted with a line-drive swing and rare power to the opposite field, his totals at Petco Park would’ve been even more diminished.

Gonzalez was on base, too, for the first homer hit at Petco that would not have gone out with the original dimensions. Juan Uribe’s two-run homer in the fourth, giving the Dodgers a 2-1 lead, barely had the distance to clear the shortened wall in a shortened part of the outfield in right.

Indeed, a year ago, the same ball not have even made the warning track.

"Oh, you can tell it's closer now," said Gonzalez. "But I think the best thing is that they took the (visiting) bullpen off the (right-field) sideline and put it out there (next to the Padres 'pen beyond the wall in left-center). There were never enough seats for the guys and the ball would get trapped in the seats. You won't have that now. That's good."

Fact is, you could tell the difference from outside the ballpark. For his first view, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly didn’t even have to get out of his pajamas.

“I can see it from my (high-rise) hotel room,” said Mattingly. “It looked shorter from there.”